Two hundred years ago, on this day, October 21st, 1824, Joseph Aspdin got a patent…
By 1817, he had set up in business on his own in central Leeds. He must have experimented with cement manufacture during the next few years, because on 21 October 1824 he was granted the British Patent BP 5022 entitled An Improvement in the Mode of Producing an Artificial Stone, in which he coined the term “Portland cement” by analogy with the Portland stone,[3] an oolitic limestone that is quarried on the channel coast of England, on the Isle of Portland in Dorset. See below for the text of the patent. [Wikipedia]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 270ishppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Industrial Revolution (not called that at the time!) was in full swing, all sorts of wondrous chemical and physics innovations were happening. often led by empiricists, rather than theoreticians because we didn’t even have an atomic theory of matter at that point, or not one that we liked.
Why this matters is that cement has an astonishing carbon footprint. 8% of global emissions? I haven’t had time to track down a source better than CBS. But ballpark,that seems right-ish] And we’re not going to be net zero if we’re still making lots of things out of steel and cement using current techniques. Whether you can muck around with the clinker or you need CCS, who knows? We’ll find out. My money is that climate change will continue to be an unmitigated disaster.
What happened next we went head over heels in love with cement.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
The long-anticipated shift from “climate change is a leftie anti-progress hoax” to “it’s too late to do anything except geo-engineer the planet” is underway.
Speaking on the far-right television programme GB News on Wednesday 16th October s, former Conservative minister Jacob Rees-Mogg on Wednesday 16th October said the following
“When it comes to climate change, most of the public discourse surrounds hair shirt measures to cut emissions and phase out fossil fuels. But is this really where our focus ought to be?
“Perhaps, instead of being obsessed by futile attempts to stop climate change, a goal that’s looking increasingly out of reach, we should turn our attention to the virtues of green technologies and innovative developments to tackle some of the most practical and immediate challenges.”
[continues ad nauseam]
For once failing to meet the award-winning standards for fierce scrutiny, historical awareness and political balance for which GN News is globally respected [yes, that is SARCASM] the journalist in question failed to ask Rees-Mogg the following questions
a) Had he ever peddled climate skepticism (e.g. in a 2013 opinion piece in the Telegraph), despite his political hero Margaret Thatcher having made several ‘time to save the world’ speeches in 1988-1990
b) Had he tried to stop his mate Michael Gove in an (ultimately unsuccessful) effort to remove climate change from the National Curriculum.
c) Had he ever tried to stop his former boss, Prime Minister David Cameron from “cutting the green crap” like house insulation, greener transport etc, that would have led to lower bills (and probably lower emissions)
d) Is this not simply a classic ‘reverse-ferret’ – changing position so quickly that everyone will be too busy feeling their head spin to ask obvious questions about intelligence, integrity and the rest of it (that nobody expects from politicians anymore anyway).
The answers are, of course. Yes, no., no, and yes.
This switch from “not happening” to “too late to do anything” is time-honoured, and across many issues. See this 1986 clip from the classic BBC sitcom Yes Prime Minister. “The standard Foreign Office four stage procedure”
It’s been happening around climate, intermittently, since the late 2000s.
Three posts today about something that happened on Monday 9th October 2006
Australian scientists and charities produced a report “Australia Responds: Helping Our Neighbours Fight Climate Change” – see this blog post
The Australian Labor Party piggy-backed its own statement about climate refugees – see this blog post
Therefore someone born on that day in the South Pacific would be turning 18. Happy Birthday (a letter to them here)
The only thing left to talk about, imo, is what is to be done now, by people of good intentions and determination?
I offer – for what it is worth, a few suggestions about what white middle-class people like me, with training and education, might usefully do. I am happy to be told I am wrong, but please be specific. I am happy to be told what I have missed – as per the organisations, I will add advice.
Then I link to organisations working on this stuff. I have no idea if they’re any good. The list is NOT exhaustive. If you know of other good organisations, please share and I will add them.
What is to be done
Educate yourselves and others about climate change – not the science (bare bones is enough there) but the politics, the techniques used by those who want to slow or stop action, the pathologies that affect social movements and civil society in their (so-far not all that impressive) efforts to make states and corporations be less ecocidal. Or do the ecocide slower.
One resource (I don’t do false modesty – is the AOY site. It’s ramshackle, under-signposted but not actually THAT hard to use. There’s a search box.
Another resource (I don’t do false modesty; it’s a passive-aggressive extortion bid for attention and reassurance) is ME. I am MORE than happy to come on podcasts, do workshops etc. I am, on my day, a good communicator and also designer/executor of formats that are genuinely participatory and energising. Hit me up
You need to know about – the history (at least a little) of Australia’s international criminality on climate change, which is ABSOLUTELY 100% bipartisan. There is net zero significant different between LNP and ALP on this.
Take sustained action. Sorry, but that means being involved, at least a little bit, in a group.
Groups suck. They are riven with (usually undeclared) turf wars, brittle egos, dysfunction etc. They waste time on pointless meetings
But if you try to do stuff on your own you will be a) less effective and b) very likely shorter-lived in your efforts.
Groups suck. But suck it up…
Try to be a less-terrible ally.
People of colour, poor people etc have got far more immediate (and, gasp) important things to be doing than helping well-meaning white people be less-terrible allies. It’s exhausting emotionally, it means they have less time for the stuff they need to do.
There already exist LOADS of resources for white people to get stuck into. Here’s a brief. Please suggest additions. Please USE these resources. Please step into discomfort (together) and stay there.
Liu, Helena. “White allyship.” In Redeeming Leadership, pp. 141-156. Bristol University Press, 2020
If you have academic training and access to resources, do two things
First, share the skills you have – research, writing, etc – with people who want to take on those tasks. Don’t be a chokepoint, for your own particular needs
Secondly, expose lies and tell the truth. Study the rich. There is so much to be done, so few doing it.
Organisations
[NB This is from a google search. If someone else who actually knows first-hand has made a better list, I will take this down and point to their work]
This workshop will explore how we can build solidarity with climate impacted and marginalized communities, by understanding the ways that systems of oppression impact our activism, everyday lives and those of our communities.
On Saturday 6th (well, Sunday 7th am Australia time) I was uploading already written and proofed blog posts to the website. I had enough attention left in me to realise that at least a year ago I had fouled up my database, and the upcoming post for “October 9” was utterly invalid. To see if I could easily Close The Gap,I went to my SHED (Secret Huge Eco Database) to see what I had for that date.
I found something old that I knew about but had never really understood its implications. Or maybe, to be extra-fair to myself – the implications weren’t apparent when I entered it.
This has led to, shall we say “a flurry of activity.”
Thirty years ago, on this day, October 2nd, 1994, as the battle for a carbon tax heats up…
THE FRIENDS and enemies of Phillip Toyne, acquired during years of very public struggle over Aboriginal land rights and the environment, were in a stunned state at the ALP’s national conference in Hobart this week.
The news that one of the hardest nosed and most controversial among Australian activists had joined, of all things, the Commonwealth’s environment bureaucracy (at deputy secretary, level, no less), delighted and appalled in equal measure.. …..
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Phillip Toyne had been a thorn in the side of the Hawke government. He, as the chair of the Australian Conservation Foundation, had also done really useful work on Aboriginal land rights. And now he was tempted to try to change the system from within by becoming a senior bureaucrat for John Faulkner, the Federal Environment Minister, who was publicly toying with the idea of introducing a carbon tax.
What we learn is that people who try to change the system from within get sentenced to 20 months or years of boredom. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
What happened next. Toyne was unsuccessful. I don’t know when he quit, but it was pretty clear after February 10 1995, that no meaningful action was going to happen on climate change in Australia, at least not at the federal level. Toyne died in 2015. Having fought the good fight.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs
Can you believe this stuff? Plenty of people can, because they need to…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 399ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Paris COP – the one that everyone was building as “putting it all back together, (again)” was coming up. And therefore, you get all sorts of business groups trying to gee themselves up and provide cover for the danger of potential regulation. So alongside “We Mean Business”, you’ve got the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, for example.
What we learn is that when there’s a “big event” coming up, you get all sorts of proactive or should I say pre-emptive efforts by business to create bodies that sound cool, and will be quote-worthy, so that journalists who are having to report on potentially-dangerous-to-their-career-stuff have some both-sides-isms quotes tht they can chuck in, for “balance”. You want a for instance? Well like the inability of capitalism to cope with the shit that it is causing. The journos can get a React Quote from some nice-sounding business lobby, rather than just have to state the bare facts that we are doomed and the people doing the dooming don’t give a shit.
It’s also useful for junior policy wonks and rightwing politicians – they can point to these outfits and say soothingly (if only to themselves!) “the system responds.”
What happened next? We Mean Businesses is still going. I think it’s sponsoring various news services to build a cuddly name for itself (quite a clever thing to do, btw).
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Thirty-three years ago, on this day, September 6th, 1991,
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 355ppm. As of 2024 it is 420ishppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that everyone in science of climate science and so forth, was aware of the whole greenhouse issue. And here was some nice science about the atmosphere of Titan, one of the moons of Saturn, and the greenhouse and reverse greenhouse or anti greenhouse effect on Titan.
It didn’t, to my knowledge, have any bearing whatsoever on the politics of the time. That’s not why I’m talking about it; this site is already far too much about the politics and could do with a bit more science. So here we are.
What happened next? People kept staring through telescopes figuring out the universe. Often quite expensive telescopes.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
The “What to do about C02?” documentary, directed by Russell Porter, is 40 years old. The tweet about it did well, and I contacted Russell to say that people were watching his (excellent) documentary.
“I used to say in my teaching that a good documentary film should work for any audience anywhere, beyond its own time and place.
“TV current affairs and news programmes on the same subjects are by definition ephemeral – they usually disappear after their initial broadcast.
“The challenge for documentarians is to find the universal truths behind the specific context, and I think the enduring appeal of these CSIRO films demonstrates this point.
“But as I said in the interview, I doubt this kind of film could be made today, certainly not within an institutional context.
“For a start the national institutions like CSIRO no longer have the luxury of their own production and distribution facilities.
“Secondly, the integrity of the institutions themselves has been fatally compromised by the imposition of Thatcherite privatisations and the need to “make profit” at the expense of all other values.
“The current revelations and legal / personal disasters relating to UK sub-post masters as a result of privatised corporate greed, lies and cover-ups is a case in point.
“It is revealing that there was no official reaction to these monumental injustices until the ITV broadcast of a compelling dramatised documentary. “Mr Bates Vs. The Post Office”.“
NB He wants to make clear that
it is just my personal view rather than anything formally connected to CSIRO. I haven’t had anything to do with the organisation since 1988
I say – one of the crucial losses in the last 40 years (not that before then was by any means perfect) has been the stupefaation and demoralisation of those opposed to escalating murder and mayhem against all other species, and future generations of humans. Our sense-making has been attacked, mostly successfully. And here we are.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Senator John Faulkner was a relatively new Federal Environment Minister, and was going to be making various launches of policy documents. John Coulter had been around talking and thinking about environmental issues since the early 70s. And as a Senator for the Democrats, was well entitled to offer some free advice.
What we learn is that there have been decent parliamentarians and I should say that I think both Coulter and Faulkner were decent parliamentarians trying to grapple with these issues.
What happened next? I don’t know if Faulkner took on board anything that Coulter said, there was then the battle over carbon tax. On Friday, February 10 1995 Faulkner ran up the white flag and instead we got the frankly ridiculous Greenhouse Challenge. And here we are. The emissions kept rising.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Fourteen years ago, on this day, April 27th, 2010, soon-to-be-ex Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd sorta seals his fate.
Rudd’s problem, however, was not just the decision but the manner of its release. The story was broken by Lenore Taylor in the Sydney Morning Herald on 27 April when she reported that the ETS had been shelved ‘for at least three years’. The leak to Taylor was devastating. Rudd was taken by surprise and left without an explanation. ‘It was a very damaging leak and hard to retrieve, ‘ Wong said. ‘It derailed our government’, Martin Ferguson said.
(Kelly, 2014:292)
And
It was the decision that seemed to snap voters’ faith in Kevin Rudd. Perhaps a final straw. Straight after the government announced it was deferring an emissions trading scheme until 2013, graphs of the Prime Minister’s satisfaction rating looked like a rock falling off a cliff. Labor’s primary vote tumbled after it. The kitchen cabinet was scheduled to meet on April 27 to decide exactly how to explain the delay, and the conditions under which the government would pledge that the ETS policy would be revived.
News of the decision had also filtered through to a few members of the broader cabinet, who had determined to try to wind it back when cabinet met to “ratify” the budget on April 29. But on the morning of April 27, the Herald disclosed the decision to remove the scheme from the budget in a front page article entitled “ETS off the agenda until late next term”. It was the first many ministers and senior public servants had heard of it.
Knowing the back story helps explain why the government’s response on that day was so confused.
Taylor, L. 2010. Decision that shattered faith in PM. Sydney Morning Herald, 5 June, p.2
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 390ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Rudd had used climate as a stick to beat John Howard with, then enjoyed Turnbull twisting in the wind as the Nationals and many Liberals were not as keen on climate action as Turnbull was.
What I think we can learn from this
Spineless people don’t grow spines (see also Starmer, Keir).
What happened next
Chaos and horror. Not the fault of Gillard or the Greens. It’s all on Rudd and Abbott and their enablers.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Fifteen years ago, on this day, April 20th, 2009, the Australian Chief Scientist tried to inject some urgency into the policy debate…,
The Government’s chief scientist wants the country to set the toughest possible targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, warning that action must begin now against climate change.
The Government has committed to cutting Australia’s emissions by 5 to 15 percent of 2000 levels by 2020 and wants to start an emissions trading scheme next year.
However, the target has been slammed by the Greens and environmental groups as being too low and the Opposition has also recently signalled it would support a stronger cut in emissions.
Professor Penny Sackett would not put an exact figure on what she thought the target should be but she said she has advised the Government to set the steepest target possible.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 387.6ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Rudd Government had been selling out the future by allowing lobbyists for the oil and gas and coal industries to chip away and chip away at the already initially piss-weak ambition of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. It was about to be introduced to Parliament, and presumably Penny Sackett, Chief Scientific Adviser was trying to stiffen everyone’s resolve so that further compromises would be minimal. Well, ideally, ambition will be ramped up, but no, it’s a ratchet.
What we learn is that scientists are largely powerless in these matters and all they can do is speak truth to power and power will ignore them and so it came to pass.
What happened next? Rudd’s Piss-weak and ever pisser weaker legislation was defeated because of Tony Abbott. And because the Greens decided something bad would come along, Rudd was toppled the following year. And Sackett resigned in April 2011 without giving a reason, but this has shed some light on why she might have done that.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
